John —

Running for Senate feels a little like drinking from a firehose. But I had a moment of free time this morning, and I wanted to reach out to tell you more about my decision to run for Senate.

Before I was a politician, I was a language arts teacher at a Title 1 middle school on the westside of San Antonio. Every day, my students struggled heroically to overcome poverty and systems designed to hold them back.

Growing up, I saw that same fight in my mother — a preacher’s daughter from Laredo who left home at 19. She moved up to Austin and met my birth father, whose drinking problem sometimes led to violence.

One night, he became abusive again, but that night, my mother’s love rose to meet it. She packed all our stuff into her little Ford Escort and took me to the hotel where she worked. The manager let us stay in one of the rooms until we found a small apartment of our own in East Austin.

Like my students, my mom was a fighter. And she passed that fighting spirit along to me.

I first ran for the Texas House in 2018 to fight for working people like my mom and my students. It was a race no one thought we could win, but together we flipped a district Donald Trump had won just two years earlier.

As a state legislator, I’ve led the fight against the billionaire mega-donors that have rigged the system against working Texans. And I’m the only member of the Texas Legislature who has never taken a dime of corporate PAC money.

Now, as those same billionaire mega-donors take over the federal government, we need more fighters in Washington who will take power back for working people.

If you agree, I’m asking you to split $20 between our campaign and No Dem Left Behind. If we’re going to take back our state and our country, I need you with me.